First Bloom

Grayson's birthday and flowers are blooming.

Crawling around before Dad leaves

Early celebration

Not sure if this is the case everywhere, but cupcake shops are all the rage where we are. Andra's favorite is in Raleigh. She takes them with her to see clients, but always ends up buying a few extras for the house. Since Ryan was leaving for Boston a few days before his birthday, we decided to have a small celebration before he left. A simple cupcake seemed like the perfect idea to give to Grayson to celebrate his birthday - you know, a contained mess. How much damage could he do?

Chocolates, water, and knives

Ryan took a study abroad trip to Switzerland in between school and going up to Boston for his internship. Andra = jealous! He went over a few days early and then was there with his group for a week. They got to visit CERN (large particle collider), Credit Suisse headquarters, the University of Lausanne (the Fightin' Swiss!), some castles, and the World Trade Organization. It was a great trip.

Ryan - "It was weird to be on a college campus and not see any stadiums, school colors, mascots on t-shirts, etc."

He did almost get kicked off a train when he first arrived because he bought a ticket that he had to get stamped at the original station (he didn't know this and didn't get it stamped). The train conductor and everyone else in his car only spoke French (he took Latin in high school), but they took pity on him and he was able to get to his stop. When he arrived, he asked the next 5 people who spoke English what had happened with his ticket. They each gave a different explanation. None of them were right.

More Easter Egg Hunt

The youngest group was 2-3, so we had to go ninja style.

Easter egg hunt - 2009

Our church held an Easter Egg Hunt in a nearby park in Durham. Each area was taped off by age group. G had a set jaw all morning and was equally confused and apathetic about the whole experience. The most successful egg gathering technique was simply holding him upside down by his ankles to where he would grab an egg as he was struggling to touch the ground. BTW, he loves dangling like this, so don't think Ryan was being cruel.

We're back

So sorry for not keeping up with this. Obviously Ryan got back from the summer in Boston, and, well...

We're going to post a bunch of things here in the next week or two to catch up (about a year's worth of pics/info) - aren't goals fun!

Oh, and Ryan joined Twitter - look for him @ryan_schwenk

And away we go....